François Houtart. Belgian Marxist Priest and sociologist,
director of the CETRI ( Tricontinental Center ) and the review "
Alternatives Sud". Militant antiglobalist. The canon François
Houtart is a catholic priest and intellectual Marxist of international fame.
Grandson of the count Henry Carton de Wiart (1869-1951), who was one of the
leaders of the Catholic Party and pioneer of the Christian democracy,
François Houtart was born in Brussels in 1925. After his training in
philosophy and theology at the Seminar in Mechelen, he was ordered priest in
1949. Graduated in political and social sciences of the catholic University
of Leuven and graduate of the International Higher Institute of Town
planning of Brussels , he is a doctor of sociology of the UCL where he was a
professor of 1958 to 1990. Author or co-author of many publications
regarding socio-religious research, he took part, as expert, in the council
of the Vatican II (1962-1965). He participated in the
Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal on US Crimes in Vietnam in 1967.
Today, he directs a ONG, the CETRI ( Tricontinental Center ) based in
Louvain-la-Neuve as well as the review "Alternatives Sud". Regarded as
a prophet by the ones, like a dangerous activist by the others, François
Houtart is one of the most active collaborators of the World Social Forum of
Porto Allegre and one of the most convinced militants for "another
globalisation". Houtart is Executive Secretary of the Alternative World
Forum, President of the International League for rights and liberation of
people, president of the BRussells
Tribunal and senior adviser to the
President of the United Nations General Assembly Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann.

Francois
Houtart. Founder and President of the Centre Tricontinental and
Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Université Catholique de Louvain.

30 October
2008

Ladies and
Gentlemen, Delegates, and Dear Friends:

The world
needs alternatives and not merely regulation. It is not enough to rearrange
the system; we need to transform it. This is a moral duty. In order to
understand why, we must adopt the point of view of the victims of this
system, Adopting this point of view will allow us to confront reality and to
express a conviction, the reality that the whole ensemble of crises which
currently afflict us –finances, food supply, water, energy, climate, social—
are the result of a common cause, and the conviction that we can change the
course of history.

Confronting
Reality

When 850
million human beings live below poverty level, and their number increases,
when every twenty-four hours tens of thousands of human being die of hunger,
when day after day entire peoples, whole cultures and ways of life simply
disappear, putting in peril humanity’s patrimony, when the climate
deteriorates to the point that one wonders whether or not it is worth the
trouble to live in New Orleans, the Sahel, the islands of the Pacific,
Central Asia, or along the coasts of our continents, we cannot content
ourselves with speaking about the financial crisis.

Already this
latter crisis has had consequences which are more than merely financial:
unemployment, rising prices, exclusion of the poor, vulnerability of the
middle classes. The list of victims grows ever longer. Let us be clear. This
crisis is not the product of some bad turn taken by one economic actor of
another, nor is it just the result of an abuse which must be punished. We
are witnessing the result of a logic which defines the economic history of
the past two centuries. From crisis to regulation and from regulation to
crisis, the unfolding of the facts always reflects the dynamics of the rate
of profit. When it rises we deregulate; when it falls we regulate, but
always in service to the accumulation of capital, which is understood as the
engine of growth. What we are seeing today is, therefore, far from new. It
is not the first crisis of the financial system and it will not be the last.

Nevertheless,
the financial bubble, created over the course of the past few decades,
thanks, among other things, to the development of new information and
communication technologies, has added fundamentally new dimensions to the
problem. The economy has become more and more virtual and differences in
income have exploded. To accelerate growth in the rate of profit, a whole
new architecture of derivatives was put in place and speculation became the
modus operandi of the economic system. The result has been a
convergence in the logic governing the disorders which characterize the
current situation.

The food
crisis is an example. The increase in food prices was not the result of
declining production, but rather of a combination of reduced stocks,
speculation, and the increased production of agrofuels. Human lives were, in
other words, subordinated to profit taking. The behavior of the Chicago
Commodity Exchange demonstrates this.

The energy
crisis, meanwhile, goes well beyond a conjunctural explosion in the price of
petroleum. It marks the end of cheap fossil fuels, which encouraged
profligate use of energy, making possible accelerated economic growth and
the rapid accumulation of capital in the middle term. The superexploitation
of natural resources and the liberalization of trade, especially since the
1970s, expanded the transport of commodities around the world and encouraged
the use of automobiles rather than public transportation, without
consideration of either the climatic or the social consequences. The use of
petroleum derivatives as fertilizers became widespread in a productivist
agriculture. The lifestyle of the upper and middle classes was built on this
squandering of energy resources. In this domain as well exchange value took
precedence over use value.

Today, with
this crisis threatening gravely the accumulation of capital, there is a
sudden urgency about finding solutions. They will, however, respect the
underlying logic of the system: to maintain the rate of profit, without
taking into account externalities –that is to say what does not enter into
the accounting of capital and the cost of which must be born by individuals
and communities. That is the case with agrofuels and their ecological and
social consequences: destruction by monoculture of biodiversity, of the soil
and of underground water and the expulsion of millions of small peasants who
then go on to populate the shantytowns and aggravate the pressures to
emigrate.

The climate
crisis, the gravity of which global public opinion has yet to take the full
measure, is, according to the International Group of Climate Experts, the
result of human activity. Nicolas Stern, formerly of the World Bank, does
not hesitate to say that “climate change is the biggest setback in the
history of the market economy.” In effect, here as before, the logic of
capital does not taken into account “externalities” except when it reduces
the rate of profit.

The neoliberal era, which led to the increase of the later, coincided as
well with growing emissions of greenhouse gases and accelerated global
warming. The growth in the utilization of raw materials and in
transportation, as well as deregulation in the ecological sphere, augmented
the devastation of our climate and diminished the regenerative capacity of
nature. If nothing is done in the near future, 20%-30% of all living species
could disappear in the next quarter century. The acidity of the oceans is
rising and we can expect between 150 and 200 million climate refugees by the
middle of this century.

It is in this context that we must understand the social crisis. Developing
spectacularly the 20% of the world’s population capable of consuming high
value added goods and services, is more interesting from the standpoint of
private accumulation in the short and middle term than responding to the
basic needs of those whose purchasing power has been reduced to nothing.
Indeed, incapable of producing value added and having only a feeble capacity
to consume, they are nothing but a useless mob, or at best the of object
welfare policies. This phenomenon is accentuated with the predominance of
finance capital. Once more the logic of accumulation has prevailed over the
needs of human beings.

This whole ensemble of malfunctions opens up the possibility of a crisis of
civilization and the risk that the planet itself will be purged of living
things, something which also signifies a real crisis of meaning. Regulation,
then? Yes, if they constitute steps towards a radical and permanent
transformation and point towards an exit from the crisis other than war. No,
if they merely prolong a logic which is destructive of life. A humanity
which renounces reason and abandons ethics loses the right to exist.

A conviction

To be sure, apocalyptic language is by itself a sufficient catalyst for
action. On the contrary, a radical confrontation with reality like that
suggested above can lead to reaction. Finding and acting on alternatives is
possible, but not without conditions. It presupposes a long term vision, a
necessary utopia, concrete measures spaced out over time, and social actors
who can carry these projects and who are capable of carrying on a struggle
the violence of which will be proportional to the resistance to change.

This long term vision can be articulated along several major axes. In the
first place, a rational and renewable use of natural resources, which
presupposes a new understanding of our relationship with nature: no longer
an exploitation without limits of matter, with the aim of unlimited profits,
but rather a respect for what forms the very source of life. “Actually
existing” socialist societies made no real innovations in this domain.

Second, we will privilege use value over exchange value, something which
implies a new understanding of economics, no longer as the science of
producing value added as a way of encouraging private accumulation but
rather as an activity which assures the basis for human life, material,
cultural, and spiritual, for everyone everywhere. The logical consequences
of this change are considerable. From this moment forward, the market must
serve as a regulator between supply and demand instead of increasing the
rate of profit for a minority. The squandering of raw materials and of
energy, the destruction of biodiversity and of the atmosphere, are combated
by taking into account ecological and social “externalities.” The logic
governing the production of goods and services must change.

Finally, the principle of multiculturalism must complement these others. It
is a question of permitting all forms of knowledge, including traditional
forms, all philosophies and cultures, all moral and spiritual forces capable
of promoting the necessary ethic, to participate in the construction of
alternatives, in breaking the monopoly of westernization. Among the
religions, the wisdom of Hinduism in relationship to nature, the compassion
of Buddhism in human relations, the permanent quest for utopia in Judaism,
the thirst for justice which defines the prophetic current in Islam, the
emancipatory power of the theology of liberation in Christianity, the
respect for the sources of life in the concept of the land itself among the
indigenous peoples of the Americas, the sense of solidarity expressed in the
religions of Africa, can all make important contributions in the context of
mutual tolerance guaranteed by the impartiality of political society.

All of this is utopian, to be sure. But the world needs utopias, on the
condition that they have concrete, practical results. Each of the principles
evoked above is susceptible to concrete applications which have already been
the object of propositions on the part of numerous social movements and
political organizations. A new relationship with nature means, among other
things, the recovery by states of their sovereignty over their natural
resources and an end to their private appropriation, the end of monocultures
and a revaluation of peasant agriculture, and the ratification and deepening
of the measures called for by the Kyoto and Bali protocols on climate
change.

Privileging use value requires the decommodification of the indispensible
elements of life: seeds, water, health, and education, the re-establishment
of public services, the abolition of tax havens, the suppression of banking
secrecy, the cancelation of the odious debts of the States of the global
South, the establishment of regional alliances on the basis not of
competition by of complementarity and solidarity, the creation or regional
currencies, the establishment of multipolarity, and many other measures as
well. The financial crisis simply gives us a unique opportunity to apply
these measures.

Democratizing societies begins with fostering local participation, includes
the democratic management of the economy, and extends to the reform of the
United Nations. Multiculturalism means the abolition of patents on
knowledge, the liberation of science from the stranglehold of economic
power, the suppression of monopolies on information and the establishment of
religious liberty.

But who will carry this project? The genius of capitalism is to transform
its own contradictions into opportunities. How global warming can make
you wealthy! readsan ad in US Today from the beginning of 2007.
Can capitalism renounce its own principles? Obviously not. Only a new set of power
relations can get us where we need to be, something which does not exclude
the engagement of some contemporary economic actors. But one thing is clear:
the new historic actor which will carry the alternative projects outlined
above is plural. There are the workers, the landless peasants, the
indigenous peoples, women (who are always the first victims of
privatization) the urban poor, environmentalists, migrants, and
intellectuals linked to social movements. Their consciousness of being a
collective actor is beginning to emerge. The convergence of their
organizations is only in its early stages. Real political relationships are
often lacking. Some states, notably in Latin America, have already created
the conditions for these alternative projects to see the light of day. The
duration and intensity of the struggles to come depends on the rigidity of
the system in place and the intransigence of the protagonists.

Offer them, therefore, a platform in the General Assembly of the United
Nations, where they can express themselves and present their alternatives.
This will be your contribution to changing the course of history –something
which is must happen if humanity is to recover the space to live and
once again find reason to hope in the future.

This report
that compiled in a question-answer format contains the first
of an interview series I have conducted with Prof. François
Houtart of Belgiumas a part of an ongoing research.
Interview sessions were conducted in
July 2005 at the Tri-Continental Centre in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
This is the first in the series of three interviews. The
present interview was aimed at the development of an overall
theoretical framework for reconstructing François Houtart’s
intellectual biography and social thought in its
socio-political and ecclesial plus Houtart’s reaction to
some issues such as terrorism, democracy, reconciliation and
common good ethical approach. The report in its own right
is informative and has pedagogical importance for theology
and sociology alike.

BACKGROUND to François Houtart

Houtart was born in
Brussels in 1925.The young seminarian completed his Philosophy and
Theology in Malines, Belgium in 1949.His initial experiential
context was in the aftermathof World War II (1939-1945).
Houtart, as a student encountered one of the very crucial social
issues at that time, namely, the sitz im leben of the working
class community, in particular of the young workers and wanted
urgently to respond to the issue. This led him to study sociology of
religion.

Houtart obtained a
Licentiate in Socio-Political Sciences from the Catholic University
of Louvain (KUL) in 1952. Upon completion of a postgraduate course
in Urban Sociology at Chicago University in 1954, Houtart embarked on a PG Diploma programme in City
Planning at the
Institut Supérieur d´ Urbanisme Appliqué,
Brussels. In 1974, Houtart presented to the Catholic University of
Louvain, of which he is now professor emeritus, a PhD thesis on
“Religion and Ideology in Sri Lanka ”. An abridged
version of his doctoral thesis was published under the same title
and become a ground breaking systematic study in Sociology of
Buddhism and Ideologies in
Sri Lanka
. Hoping for a radical change in the Church, Houtart has been an
optimistic and energetic facilitator for the Vatican II Council on
two fronts. Firstly in his capacity serving as the secretary of the
sub-committee on signs of the times, by drafting the Pastoral
Constitution of the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes),
which became a key instrument in 20th century
Christian Social Teachings. Secondly, he advised Latin American
Bishops during and after the Council.

In 1956, Houtart
founded the Center for Socio-Religious Research (CSRR) and in the
same year became the secretary general of the International
Conference of Sociology of Religion. After 1958, he directed various
research projects and empirical studies for the International
Federation of Institutions for Socio-religious and Social Research (FERES).

Responding to Third
World issues together with the purpose of convergence and solidarity
of the social movements, specifically those occurring in the
southern hemisphere, Houtart founded CETRI- centre tri-continental
in Louvain-la-Neuve in 1976. The third World Documentation Centre of
CETRI is now integrated to the UCL library, Louvain-la-Neuve. Houtart has carried out socio-religious research
in various countries, such as Malta , Latin America, USA , India , Sri Lanka
, Vietnam , Nicaragua and has been consulted for
socio-religious research in South
Africa , Korea , Philippines , Cuba , Russia , Hong Kong,
Poland and
Italy .
In addition, Houtart has been invited to be a facilitator at many
conferences and workshops around the world. He still keeps in touch
with many countries and contexts in which he worked. Nicaragua was one of the turning points, as he
discovered a dialogue between Marxists and Christians, as a model
for liberation.

Some of the theological
colleges and institutes in South India and
Sri Lanka
have introduced Houtart´s social analysis methods into the
theological education modules. This method has had a positive impact
on the training of Christian ministers and the Laity who opted for
theological formation in South Asia.

In
1996, at the twentieth anniversary of CETRI, Houtart proposed a
meeting that later became the “Other Davos”, with the view of
creating a counter movement to the dominant world economic forum in
Davos in 1999. The World Forum for Alternatives came into being, as
a result and paved the way to the World Social Forum (WSF) in Port
Alegre in 2002. Houtart was one of the co-founders of the WSF.

Houtart was the Chief
Editor of the international journal Social Compass from
1960-1999. He served on the advisory council of the Catholic Journal
Concilium while contributing to the pages. A quarterly from
Brussels, COELI, carries
Houtart’s articles regularly. Currently, he serves as a consultant
to the journal Alternative Sud.

Houtart is actively
involved in the Brussels Tribunal for the war in
Iraq .
His involvement in the people’s tribunals goes back to the war in
Vietnam
. Houtart is shifting the focus of his studying, moving towards
issues of primal/indigenous communities (especially in
Latin America), reparation and compensation, spirituality and
political-economics, as he continues to work with social movements
and forces.

THE INTERVIEW

Q: What have been the most
important stages and turning points in your priestly and
intellectual life?

A: In the late
forties I was very conscious of the situation of the working class
community. My experiences with the
Young Christian Workers (YCW) challenged me a lot. Josef Cardijn was
an inspiration for me. He was the founder of the Young Christian
Workers Movement and later became a Cardinal. The situation of young
workers at that time was extremely difficult. The working class went
through a very difficult time during and after the Second World War.

After my ordination in 1949 I asked
permission to proceed with studies in the social sciences. I studied
the religious situation of cities: in particular, Brussels compared with other European cities. In the study, one of my
questions was why the working class was so much against the Church.

[2]
Actually, the Church was allied with the enemy of the working
class-the
bourgeoisie. I
also discovered the pastoral situation at that time - pastoral
institutions like parishes were much less present in the working
class neighbourhoods. During the whole 19th century the
Church in Europe was really literally absent
from the places where the working class was constituted - working
class neighbourhoods and also in the big cities. The identification
of the Church was with the bourgeoisie in the context of
industrialisation. Of course, there were some priests who worked
with the working class community but they had to face a lot of
troubles.

I did a similar kind of study in Chicago.

[3]
There, I discovered just the contrary. In the
USA the
Catholic migrants constituting a large proportion of working class
were accompanied by priests. The European Church had thought that the migrants
were going to a Protestant country, and that a Catholic priest
should accompany them, so that they would not become Protestants.
The good aspect of this was that priests were present there and the
pastoral work was being carried out. Priests were natural leaders of
the group and they strongly identified with the cause of the class.
So there was no anti-clericalism among the American working class.
In Europe it was the other way around. My study
on American Catholicism was published in French and the original
research work may be found in manuscripts.

This research work was an important turning point
for me - in order to better study the pastoral issues of the working
class I opted for a sociological approach.

The second turning
point was my travels in Latin America
in the 1950s.

My
first visit in Latin America was in Cuba for the YCW congress for Central America and
Caribbean in 1953. This was something I had wanted to do
for as long as I had known the leaders of YCW movement at the
International Level. In addition to this, I was very impressed by
the priests from Latin America who came to
Louvain when I was studying there. It was during my holidays from
the University of Chicago, where I was attending
a postgraduate course in sociology, that I went to Cuba for the congress, and I also took the
opportunity to stay one week in Haiti . So that was my first introduction to
Latin America. A year later I spent six months visiting the
Young Christian Workers movements in all the countries in Latin
America before returning to Europe. This was my
way of discovering
Latin America from the perspective of the poor. I
learned of many social issues that Latin America was facing at that
time and wrote an article on the situation of the Church in
Latin America for a North American Jesuit journal, which was widely
reprinted. This was the origin of the research work that I did on
Latin America over a four year-period. The research concerned all
the countries in
Latin America from social and religious points of view; the
work was published in 43 volumes between 1958 and 1962 and was
finished just before the Second Vatican Council.

In Brazil I had worked with Dom Helder Camara,
who later became the Vice-President of the Bishops’ Council of Latin
America (CELAM), so when the Council was announced he asked me to
make a synopsis (résumé) of my research in Latin America to
distribute to all the Bishops at the beginning of the Council so
they might better understand the Latin American situation. I was
then appointed as an expert to the Latin American Bishops.

The third turning point
was my commitment against the war in Vietnam.

My work in
Belgium
for the Socio-Religious Centre of the Bishops’ Conference took place
at the time of the Vietnam War. I took a position against the war
and became associated with many of the anti-war movements of the
left, especially the Communist movement. Because of this commitment,
I became the Vice-President of Belgium-Vietnam Association. This
experience helped me discover the other wars of liberation in the
Third World and elsewhere.

Of course, I had already been involved with the
struggles in Latin America for quite some time,
especially with Camillo Torres.

[4]
I knew him even before he became a priest and had invited him to
come to Louvain and study
sociology. We were friends for many years.

It was my experience in Latin America, which led
me to discover the context of
Vietnam , the role of
American Imperialist war and the liberation movements and wars in Africa. I became involved with many of the leaders of African
Liberation movements - South Africa
, Namibia , Mozambique , Angola , and Cabo Verde.

Later, I became the Chairperson of the
Belgium-Vietnam Association and was invited to Vietnam (during the war in South Vietnam in 1968 and, later, in 1974, to
North Vietnam
). That was also the origin of my sociological research on Vietnam .

[5]
This coincided with my dream of doing research on a socialist
country and the Vietnamese asked me to collaborate on the creation
of the Sociological Institute in
Hanoi. I have maintained the relationship ever since then and have
been invited to give a speech at the celebration of 60th
anniversary of the Republic of Vietnam
in August this year. The war in Vietnam was a very strong turning point in my
social commitment.

Another important
turning point has been Sri Lanka
.

Because my Latin American work had reached a
certain stage, after Vatican II, where I had also been involved with
Gaudium et Spes, the secretary of the sub-commission of Latin
American bishops asked me to help them prepare the Medellin
Conference of 1968.The conference was focused on the application of
Vatican II in the context of Latin America.
Since I had accompanied them to the Council and also because of my
studies on Latin America, they wanted me to
help them with preparatory material and the like, dealing with all
aspects of the Church, social commitment, pastoralia, liturgy, etc.
They invited me to the meeting as an expert, but when I arrived,
there was a Veto of the Holy See and so I could not participate in
the conference. The Latin American Bishops were very disappointed
but could not reverse the decision.

Though
it was a disappointment, I also thought that I had completed a step
of the work and I had trained many leaders in Latin America (many of
whom had studied in
Louvain) to continue the work. I was then invited to do the same
work in Sri Lanka byTissa
Balasuriya OMI

[6]
whom I had met in Kenya when he was there for
the YCS[7]
Movement meeting. As I was conducting some research work in
Kenya
at that time they had invited me to the meeting. Tissa asked me,
“Why do you not come to Sri Lanka
to do the same kind of work you have done in
Latin America?” I replied, “Of course, I am most interested!” In
1968 I was in Kerala ( South India) for some conferences in different universities. In Kerala
they pay well for resource persons, so I collected enough money to
travel through Asia before going to Sri Lanka . I went to Japan , Korea , Hong Kong,
Philippines ,
Vietnam , and
Indonesia and finally to
Sri Lanka
. This was for me a great discovery. There I learned a great deal
aboutthe Oriental
cultures, especially the Asian religions
of Buddhism and Hinduism. During the following 13 years I went to Sri Lanka every year.

Finally, I decided to do my PhD on
Sri Lanka
, which I had never thought of doing before.

I had done some work on American Catholicism in
Chicago, but I did not present it as a thesis because that time I
was not thinking of a university career and I was working in
Brussels with the Bishops’ Conference and was occupied with
socio-religious research. Later on the Research Centre was
integrated with the Catholic University of Louvain.

In Old Louvain I was responsible for the Research
Centre for the Sociology of Religion. The scientific studies took
place throughout the city of Louvain. I had at my disposal a very big house,
where I could do my work for the University and the rest of my work
at large, namely, solidarity work with different social and
liberation movements. Then New Louvain came into being! But when we
moved to Louvain-la-Neuve all the University functions were unified
and I had no space for my wider work. Not only that, but the
atmosphere in the University was very conservative after 1968, so I
was thinking of another space not only from a physical perspective,
but also from an ideological point of view. That is why I founded
the Tricontinental Centre (CETRI) in 1976 - to continue the
solidarity work with social movements and forces in the South.

Q: How do you connect your
priesthood and mission of the Church with being involved in larger
world issues?

A: That has been
for me a fundamental question. First I wanted to be a missionary

and that was my dream always ever since I was ten
years old.

[10]
I had correspondence with missionaries in
India .
During secondary school, I was involved with the work for the
missions. But when I wanted to enter the seminary my father was
opposed, not because I was going to the seminary but because I was
thinking of becoming a missionary. He said you are the eldest of
fourteen children and you must remain in the country. I was very
disappointed, but then I met a cousin of my mother who was an
auxiliary Bishop of Malines and I asked him what to do. He proposed
that I go first to the diocesan seminary for basic education in
philosophy and theology. It was good training, he said, and after
that I would still have the option of becoming a missionary. Well,
thereafter I opted to study social sciences because of my interest
and discoveries with Young Christian Workers (YCW) concerning social
reality. But I never thought that going to the seminary would end up
giving me the opportunity to work all over the world. The first
reason for my position is that social commitment is a part of an
active Christian commitment. My experience with the Young
Christian Workers helped me greatly to come to this understanding.
Then I gradually discovered the social teachings of the Church as a
basic ground in this regard. Working with Canon Cardijn personally
was another reference for this commitment.

The
question became more difficult when I began to work against war in Vietnam, because that
was a political matter. I took to the streets for demonstrations
and meetings. For a priest at that time that was not normal. I was
attending international conferences and having press conferences and
being interviewed by radio, television, etc. Finally I was called
by the Rector of the Catholic University!

He was a very good person. But he said, “I ask
you not to use your title as professor of the Catholic University of
Louvain for any matter in connection with Vietnam , because I have had lot of complaints.”
I said, “I do not use it but when the media people interview me they
use it”. Then he asked me to explain my commitment against war in Vietnam . I explained for an
hour. He listened and finally his conclusion was, “Okay, go on, but
do not use the title of the University and, finally, between Ho Chi
Min and Johnson

[11]
(Johnson was the President of the USA at that time), my
chromosomes bring me nearer to Johnson than to Ho Chi Min.” It was
in fact a political statement, but it showed me the degree of social
awareness of a Rector of the oldest Catholic university in the
world!

Then came the issue of the struggle against
continuing colonialism, especially with the Portuguese colonies.

[12]
On this issue I had to take a position against the local Church,
which was fully allied with the Portuguese government.[13]
I was invited to a solidarity meeting in
Sudan with
South Africa
and the Portuguese colonies. I wanted to reflect on my commitment
as a priest and I thought that if just because I am a priest, I
cannot participate in solidarity with struggles for justice, and
then there is something really wrong in that form of Christianity. I
said to myself no, I am not going to stop. I must go to solidarity
movement meetings. I decided to go to
Khartoum and if my Bishop or the Holy
See were think that what I was doing was not compatible with the
priesthood, I would assume responsibility. I continued my work in Vietnam , Angola , Mozambique , South
Africa , Cuba and with resistance movements in Latin America. Of course, this was not without difficulties and twice
the Holy See tried to put me out of the University. But on these
occasions the main protection came from the state. Professors of Louvain University
are paid by the state and they cannot be thrown out on just anyone’s
initiative. It is necessary to organise a juridical commission and
to prove that the person concerned has committed a grave
professional mistake. They could not use such an argument in my case
and, luckily, to a certain extent, I was protected by the state
against the Church.

Another factor in the Roman Curia being against
my activities was that my sociological approach was based on Marxist
analysis. I was very close to the liberation theologians in Latin
America and
Asia, especially to Sebastian Kappen from Kerala
(1924-1993).

[14]
I was also closely involved a lot in developing Marxist social
analysis methodology (for security reasons, we called it structural
analysis) in Asia. This took place in India , Sri Lanka
, Malaysia , Singapore , Thailand , Bangladesh , and, lastly, at a three-week seminar
in Baguio, in the Philippines .[15]

This kind of analysis was the best instrument to
understand the major social problems of capitalist societies and
that is why I do not do see any contradiction with the Christian
teachings .On the contrary. But it was a move against the mainstream
currents in the Church. Theologically there was no fundamental
objection for me, knowing, of course, that social reality, social
struggle and the struggle for liberation are never totally pure. We
Christians agree in general with revolutions for social justice, but
with one condition, that is that they be made by the angels! But no
revolution is made by angels, and so we tend to object to
revolution. Of course, there are always ambiguities. Can we wait for
an unambiguous situation? No! The problem is whether to choose the
ambiguities of the rich or ambiguities of the poor. We have to
choose and the Gospel tells us to embrace the ambiguities of the
poor. This means a critical commitment: critical in fruition of the
values of the Gospel and commitment because we live in history, not
beyond history. Being constructively critical –that is something I
have always tried to do! Most people accept such position, but only
if they know you are committed. External criticism, they tend to
believe, is in service of the enemy.

Let us give an example: the resistance in
Iraq against the invasion by
the United States
and the
United Kingdom
. It was just last week that I attended the World Tribunal on
Iraq in Istanbul after having presided over the Brussels
Tribunal on the same issue

[16].
There are all kinds of problems involved with the resistance. Of
course, Iraqis must resist, but at the same time we cannot accept
the killing of innocent people in order to create terror. When I
discussed the matter with Fidel Castro in early 2005, he told me,
“We cannot accept any kind of terrorism. It must be absolutely
condemned and we cannot tolerate it, even coming from the Chechens,
the Palestinians and the Iraqis.” Of course, we agreed also that if
the ethical judgement must be radical, it does not accept a
political judgment that does not put on the same level state
terrorism as a policy and terrorism by peoples in a desperate
situation.

Q: Can you explain how you
became a Canon of the Roman Catholic Church?

A: It was a
folkloric event. Actually, there are two types of Canons in the
Catholic Church: The true ones and the honorary ones. True ones are
the counsellors to the Bishops celebrating the offices in the
cathedral. Honorary ones are the priests who receive this title for
their services. It is like Monsignor in other countries. The rule
was that when a priest is appointed a professor of a Catholic
university, he automatically receives the title of Canon. That is
how it happened.

I said to the Bishop that I did not want this
title. But my request was not listened to. The decision was taken in
my absence and a ceremony was planned for the installation. We were
four to be installed. But when the date approached, they could not
reach me, because I was not in Louvain. I was in Moscow!
They could not reach me. When it became known that I was in the Soviet Union, there was a scandal. This was in the early sixties! In
fact, I had gone to Moscow because I had been
participating a meeting on the sociology of religion in Sweden . During the first
session of the Vatican II Council, where I had been working as an
“expert”, I had met the special envoy from the
Academy of
Sciences of Moscow. He had said that whenever I had time I would be welcome at the
Academy. I spent about two weeks in the USSR , taking part various visits and meetings,
in particular with the Orthodox Church in
Leningrad and
Moscow. From Sweden , I came back through Moscow. So the Diocese of Malines had to organise
a new ceremony for me.

Q: What was the historical
context when you entered the training for ministry?

A: The historical
context was very specific because it was still during the war. Five
days after of the commencement of the academic year, we had to leave
the seminary and go home. We were dispersed, because the Germans
wanted to recruit us for work in the German factories to take the
place of young Germans who had been recruited for the war. So we
were sent back home. Courses were organised in different places,
like Catholic hospitals, high schools, etc.

During that period I spent several months with my
grandparents for security reason. That was very interesting for me
as my grandfather had been prime minister. He was the founder of the
Christian Democratic Party in the 19th century in
Belgium and had served as
Chairman of sessions of the League of Nations in Geneva. He had had great political experience and was also a writer.
It was thus a very interesting experience for me to be with him.

After that I went to the countryside for some
time and there I joined the guerrilla resistance to the German
occupation and Nazism. This was also very important for me as later
I got involved in anti-war activities.

Q: What were the
intellectual currents at the time you were in postgraduate studies
and who were the key players who attracted you most?

A:
During the seminary formation Marie-Dominique Chenu,
Jean Danielou, and Henri de Lubac
were the most important French
theologians; Canon Jacques Leclercq, professor at the
Catholic University in
Louvain, was very important both in
sociology and in Natural Law. In sociology, it was Emile Durkheim,
and Gurwitch,[17]the latter of whom was still alive at that time.
I went to the University of Chicago especially for the
study of urban sociology. It was a great school; Parker and Berger
were both associated with it.

It was only in
Sri Lanka
that I discovered Karl Marx. When I was doing my thesis I began to
work with the theories of Max Weber. Then I gradually discovered
that the Weberian approach was not enough, though Weber was
interesting. Although I already had an introduction to Marxism, it
was only in the Kandy Library of the University of Peradeniya that I began to read
Marx and Marxist literature in earnest. At that time all the walls
of the campus were full of Marxist and Leninist slogans because of
the student movement. I spent hours and hours in Kandy Library in
extremely hot weather. I read Grundrisse and finally I adopted a
Marxist approach because I found it was the best approach for
understanding pre-capitalist societies. I also read Althusser and
Bourdieuat that time.

Q:
What about your participation in Gaudium et Spes?

A: There were
commissions preparing the different documents of the Council and
there was a sub-commission for the Gaudium et Spes
introduction. I had been invited to go to
Rome for the preparatory work of this document during the four years
prior to the Council. Shortly after the opening of the Council I was
asked to be the secretary of the sub-commission for the redaction of
the introduction. Cardinal Karol Jozef Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul
II) was also a member, and there were some other interesting
theologians present: de Lubac, Chenu, and Karl Rahner. The text was
based on a book that I had written with the title TheChurch in the World, a small book, which had been
translated into several languages (Spanish, Russian, etc.). My
position was that if the Church wanted to prepare a document on the
Church’s presence in the world, it should start with the question of
what the world is. That is why the introduction started with a
certain description of the world, though not a real analysis,
because such an analysis would not have been accepted by the
Bishops. That is why the document was titled: Joys and Hopes. We
worked together with the other countries’ representatives for four
years’ time. It was the subject of great discussion because these
texts belonged to one of the two major documents (constitutions) of
the Council, the other being Lumen Gentium.

To begin such a document with a new approach was
not an easy thing, because up to that point in the history of the
Church, the approach of conciliar documents had been a deductive
one, which characteristic of a theological perspective. They start
with the Word of God (revelations) and then go to reality. The whole
training of the clergy at that time in theology was highly dogmatic.
In this traditional approach the first thing is the Word of God that
must be understood and then communicated to the people.

In Gaudium et Spes it was completely the
other way around. We took an inductive approach and that was not in
line with the long ecclesiastical tradition of Church documents. So
some theologians were not at ease with that the kind of approach we
had taken. I remember one member of the Theological Commission, a
French Cardinal, saying after reading it, “This text seems to be
written by a sociologist and not by a human being.” So up until the
end there was no assurance that the Council would accept it and we
had to do a lot of redaction. At least it was accepted in the final
plenary session.

Q: What is your
relationship with the Protestant churches?

A: I have been
involved with the World Council of Churches (WCC), before, and after
the Vatican II Council. I participated in the Programme to Combat
Racism. I often went to
Geneva then. I also have been involved with Frère Roger Schutz and
the Taizé Community in France . After the Council,
I became involved in dealing with various social issues.

Q:
Was Nicaragua a turning point in your thinking
process?

A: I had been in
Nicaragua in 1954 when I made
my first visit to the YCW in Latin America.
This was during the Somoza dictatorship. But at that time I had not
established any specific links with the country. When the Sandinista
revolution took place I was still working in Vietnam . I had continued to work with Latin
American countries, but not as intensively as previously. I had
friends in
Nicaragua , some Jesuits and some Franciscans who
were very close to the Sandinista revolution. When I had finished
the main part of my work in Vietnam
, including the training of a good number of the members of the Institute of Sociology and with the study of
the Vietnamese commune of Hai Van in the delta of the Red River in North Vietnam .
Friends in Nicaragua wanted me to come there, so I decided
to go. The Nicaraguan experience was extraordinary because it was a
society in which a revolution was taking place. One of the questions
was how to relate to culture, religion and sociology of religion in
particular in that situation. One thing that impressed me was the
commitment of Christians. There was not so much theological thinking
as such, as people in Nicaragua were more
practically than intellectually oriented but there was a living
Christianity within a revolutionary process. It was a very complete
experience, wherein, for example, the liturgical transformation was
very important.

The
Missa Campesina
(the peasant mass) was rich with the songs taken from the Nicaraguan
folklore. People participated with great enthusiasm and faith. It
meant a renewal in the life of the Church. Though theMissa Campesina was later forbidden by the Church authorities,
many continued to practise it. There was also a new approach to the
Bible.

[18]
From the point of view of the faith, it was a very important
spiritual experience. I was happy to witness it. I founded a social
research centre affiliated with the UCA (Central American
Universities) and also worked with the Sandinistas on different
aspects of social research. Whenever I went to
Nicaragua I was able to stay few days in Cuba and since1953 I have been there quite a few
times. I had long discussions with several friends, intellectuals on
issues of religion, revolution, Marxism, etc. Because several of
them were in touch with Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador, where
many Christians were involved with revolutionary movements and also
with the liberation theologians, they began to think that it was
inadequate to repeat as dogma that religion is the opiate of the
people. After two or three years they proposed that we organise a
course on the sociology of religion. They knew I was using a Marxist
approach and they finally convinced the Central Committee of the
Communist Party to invite me and my colleague Genevieve
Lemercinier for an intensive two-week course. This was held in La
Havana in the school of diplomats. About 50 people attended the
course, including those responsible for Party ideology and
professors of philosophy and one Colonel of the army in uniform. It
was as in 1986, after years of Soviet domination.

Our message was: If you are Marxists you cannot
look at reality in a dogmatic way. You have first to look at the
reality. Is religion is necessarily the opiate of the people? Let us
study the facts. The course studied historical situations and
various religions, including Christianity. The conclusion was that
some times religion is the opiate of the people and sometimes it is
not. It can be the inspiration for social commitment and liberation.
They agreed and a year after the clause in the rules of the
Communist Party saying that it was forbidden for a believer to be a
member of the Party was suppressed. The contents of the course were
published under the title The Sociology of Religion. All this
happened thanks to Nicaragua where I found many Christians, together
with Marxists, among others, people like Ernesto Cardinal, very
committed to social change.

Q: Would
you comment on the impact of your
seminars[19]
in Southern India and in
Sri Lanka , especially with regard to
theological education and social movements?

A: In fact,
Genevieve Lemercinier and I had conducted many social analysis
courses in the
Philippines ,
Thailand ,
Malaysia ,
India , Sri Lanka and Pakistan . Our main aim was
to help understand the society especially for the people engaged in
social movements and community development work. I went back to
Kerala in 2004 for a seminar with people from all over India at the Orthodox seminary. There were also
people from Socialist and Marxists parties, social activists,
theologians and Christians from different traditions. A professor
from Madurai told me that our social analysis was used
in most of the Protestant theological colleges and seminaries in the
training of ministers and laity. This was the case with the Tamil
Nadu theological seminary in
Madurai. This was the work of Bastiaan Wielenga and Gabrielle
Dietrich. I was very pleased with this news because it meant the
method had been used for social activism and for ministerial
training. In the Philippines it was used in wider social and
ecclesial movements and action groups, and student movements after
the Baguio Seminar of 1976.

That is why a year later when I came back to the Philippines with Genevieve Lemercinier for a
seminar for the major superiors of the women’s congregations of Asia, I was expelled by the Marcos. I could not enter Manila anymore, because I was denounced and put on the list of persons
prohibited from entering the Philippines (blacklisted).
The police had the order to send me back on the same plane I came
on, but it was going to
South Korea . There also I had some problems
with the military government. I had been invited by the Buddhist University, for a seminar on
Buddhism in the modern world and I discovered on the spot that it
was a political endeavour. The military dictatorship of South Korea had thought to get some ideological
support from the
Christian
Churches for their anti-Communist work. They could not
get it. Happily, in South Korea
the Protestant and Catholic Churches
were opposed to the military dictatorship, though many had suffered
for this. Being well acquainted with the Cardinal there, Cardinal
Kim, I went to visit him. The first thing that he asked was; “Do you
think that you have been followed?” He took me with him to his
private apartment because he feared there were microphones hidden in
his office and talked about the situation for one hour straight. The
event at the Buddhist University had been organised by the
military. The rector was a general. They wanted to use Buddhism as
the ideological background to justify the military regime in South Korea and to fight
against Communism. They asked me to give a talk on Buddhism in the
modern world and modern Buddhism in south Asia.
When I understood the whole matter, I completely changed my speech
during lunchtime and took a very different path and talked of the
failure in using Buddhism against Communism in
Thailand
. They were furious. They tried to stop my speech. So I was not
eager to be sent back to
South Korea .

At the Manila airport the head of police told me
“I cannot wait any more; I am ready to send you to
Bangkok but not to Seoul!” One month later I was in Malaysia for a seminar and the Minister of
Foreign Affairs in Manila given the reasons for
my being expelled from Philippines . He gave four reasons: Firstly: I
was very dangerous because I was using false names: sometimes I was
known as Father Houtart, sometimes Abbé Houtart (Father in French).
They did not understand that these were the same. The second thing
was that I had been in the guerrilla in Colombia ; they had mistaken me for Camillo
Torres. The third thing was that I had criticised the Pope. Lastly,
my writings were the bible of the Leftist Catholics in the Philippines . So for those
four reasons they expelled me. Anyway, this shows that our
sociological method had been very fruitful.

Q: Who were the leading
figures in the Philippines ?

A:
Carlos Abesamis and Bishop Xavier Labayen.

Q: How do you explain
the move in the sociology of religion from a confessional approach
to a professional approach?

A:
When I came back from
Chicago I was invited by (Canon)
Jacques Leclercq,[20]
who founded the International Conference of Sociology of Religion (Conférence
Internationale de Sociologie Religieuse or
CISR, now the SISR), to become the secretary general of this
conference, a position I subsequently held for ten years. An
important question was raised: Is sociology an ecclesiastical
discipline? Of course you can use it for pastoral purposes, but this
is not the purpose of sociology. The sociology of religion is a part
of sociology. As a matter of fact, the first name of this conference
was religious sociology. Finally, after much debate and a clear move
towards a scientific approach, it became the sociology of religion.

The same thing happened with Social Compass,

[21]the
international journal of the sociology of religion. It was
originally a Dutch journal[22],
which was instituted in the service of the Catholic Church. When I
became the editor of the journal[23]
my position was that it should become a scientific journal. The same
controversy took place at the Catholic University of Louvain where
the research centre I was in charge of was part of the Faculty of
Economic, Social and Political Sciences, but the research was
conducted for the purposes of pastoral work. That led to a conflict
with the Rector of the University, who was a Monsignor. He wanted
the centre to be under the Faculty of Theology and told me that
sociology of religion is at the service of the Church. My position
was that it should remain a scientific activity within the social
sciences at the University. Later, when a layman became Rector,
there were no more problems. As the editor of the journal I first
opened it to non-Catholic Christians and then to people of other
faiths and finally to all those who present their research in a
scientific manner. So this was how we moved from a confessional to a
professional approach.

Q: Tell something
about your association with the journal Concilium and the COELI
Bulletin.

A:
Concilium[24]:
I have been with the council of Concilium since the beginning. I
have written several articles. Now I do not have much time, but
continue to receive their programmes. Initially I was associated
with the Flemish theologian Edward Schillebeckx.

COELI
Bulletin[25]:
I have been on the board since the beginning. They have meetings in
Brussels and when I am here I go. I saw the impact of it on
theological thinking in Asia, Latin America and
Africa. It was very much associated with the Christians for
Socialism in the beginning. The magazine has been important in
continuing the path of the liberation theology during the
restoration period initiated by and Paul VI[26].

Q: What was your
motivation for starting CETRI (Tricontinental Centre)?

A: The kind of work
that CETRI is doing now had already existed when I was in Brussels and in the context of Louvain University. When I was working with
the research centre for the sociology of religion, because of my
travels in Latin America and Asia I had many contacts, and my
preoccupation was solidarity with the so-called
Third World and solidarity with the people and communities who were
struggling to change society. In Louvain I had enough room in the University building assigned to the
centre for both activities, but when the University moved to Louvain la Neuve, (New Louvain), the main problem
became the physical space, because University activities were
concentrated. But also an autonomous ideological space became
necessary after the reaction to May 1968. I took the challenge
positively and thought that it was a good opportunity to organise
the Tricontinental Centre.

I had some inheritance from my father, but that
was not enough and my mother and some friends came forward and CETRI
was founded in 1975. It was built with enough space for
accommodation for postgraduate students from Asia, Africa and
Latin America. A documentation centre was established to
house the many documents I had been receiving from
Third World countries. I also had exchange of journals with
Social Compass. Soon we realised that we did not have enough
space for this at CETRI. Happily, the University was very willing to
cooperate and the documentation centre was integrated into the
Social Science Faculty. After some time, it became partially
financed by the Belgian Ministry of Development Cooperation.

We also thought of having a journal of our own.
It began as South-South Bulletin in English, Spanish and
French. For two years we focused on the resistance movements in
Southern countries. Finally I decided to begin Alternative Sud

[27]
to give an opportunity for the voicing of the ideas and critical
thinking of the South. This goes together with our concern to share
the Southern views with the North.

So CETRI could be a meeting ground for the three
continents of the South and also a place to continue with the common
work of thinking and research.

Q: In what directions is
CETRI currently moving? In other words, how would you describe CETRI
in 2005?

A: CETRI continues
to disseminate the critical thinking of the South by way of the
documentation centre and the journal Alternative Sud, which
has been translated into various languages, such as Spanish, Italian
and Arabic. A new focus is on the convergence of social movements
and the globalisation of resistance. This all began with the
organisation of the meeting that came to be known as the Other
Davos ( Switzerland ) in 1999.
Representatives of social movements (peasants’, workers’ and women’s
movements) from various parts of the world all came together with
analysts of worldwide renown, such as Samir Amin, for the common
goal of proving that is “alternatives are possible”. The Brazilians
picked that idea up and paved the way for the World Social Forum.
Actually the original idea was given at the 20th
anniversary of CETRI in 1996, when Ernesto Cardenal and Samir Amin
were present. I made a speech mentioning that we should organise a
counter Davos to dominant World Economic Forum. That became the
World Forum for Alternatives.

Now
actually CETRI has been somewhat institutionalised with its
documentation centre, the journal (Alternative Sud), and with
other publications on resistance. So currently CETRI is at the
service of globalisation of resistance.

On of the main issues is finance, because there
is practically no structural financing. The danger is to be absorbed
in fundraising and realising contracts. My hope is that CETRI will
not be forced to become reformist because of this. I do not want to
leave a place that we have built through the years for more radical
positions, shifted to less clear commitments. Of course, CETRI has
built up a partnership network throughout the world. This is a great
hope. But, again, to maintain partnerships we need funds. You need
to communicate and meet; so, for the moment, I keep those contacts
because I do not have to be paid. But others just remain here and
sometimes they do not even have money to go to the Social Forums.
There are real needs but you do not have finances, so the system is
killing you! This is an important question we have to face.

Q: Please describe your
emphases in the different periods from 1950s.

A: In the fifties
the main emphasis was on the fact that the working class in
continental
Europe was quite opposed to the Church and even against
religion. On this I reflected in contrast with the Gospel’s choice
of justice and identification with the poor. One of my main
preoccupations at that time was to try and explain why such a
contradiction existed. Precisely the people who are suffering more
from the economic system were the ones who did not believe in the
message of the Gospel and a good part of the bourgeoisie was nearest
to the Church. I remember the study I made in
Brussels showing that the working class neighbourhood had less than
ten percent regular religious practice and in the bourgeoisie
neighbourhood it was more than fifty percent. I did more empirical
research about this. Of course, at that time already more or less we
knew the reasons, as it was part of industrialisation process, which
created the class opposition between a new class and the
bourgeoisie. But what I discovered was that during the whole period
of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, the Catholic Church was
not institutionally present with the people. It was not only an
ideological position, but even the pastoral structures were lacking
precisely in the places where the working class was established.
That was my main preoccupation in the fifties and that is why I went
to the USA

At the end of the fifties my interest was
Latin America, which was the most Catholic continent in full
demographic expansion, with very deficient pastoral structures and
also with quite radical social movements. The Church and the
ecclesial structures were quite far from the major problems. That is
why I began extensive research on all the countries
Latin America. I proposed it to the Holy See but at that time but
there was absolutely no interest at that level. However, I am
thankful to a great friend of mine

Msgr. Luigi G. Ligutti,
who was a North American priest, and the observer of the Holy See at
FAO[30]
who helped me financially to organise that research, which took four
years. That was my main preoccupation at that time.

After that came the Vatican II Council. In 1962
the Council was announced. I was involved with it and in the sixties
I had the hope that a real transformation would happen in the life
of the Church from all points of view: theological, liturgical,
pastoral and social. That was a unique opportunity to realise
necessary transformations to meet the expectations and the needs of
the modern world. I invested substantial time in that and
participated in many conferences and meetings. I continued the work
of the Research Centre with the same preoccupation so that research
was not a just a scientific activity but applied research in order
to give a better instrument to action, social and pastoral and to
contribute to a better realisation of the role of the Church in the
modern world. I also was involved with the WCC at that time
regarding these issues.

At the end of the sixties and the beginning of
the seventies, though I continued doing the same kind of work, my
main preoccupation was international affairs-the war in Vietnam, the
liberation struggles in the Portuguese colonies, the struggles of
Africa and Namibia I gave many talks on those issues in a great
number of countries and to a wide variety of audiences. I was
involved with the leaders of those movements. Some of them became
very good friends. I was also preoccupied with the way that the
Church was reacting or responding to those events, and denounced the
fact that, for a while, the American Churches defended the American
role in Vietnam, and that the Portuguese Catholic Church supported
colonialism as a part of the struggle against communism in Africa.
That was in the seventies.

I
founded CETRI. In 1976 my preoccupation was to have an instrument
with a sociological approach in order to realise solidarity with the
Third World countries and also to bring about a more scientific
basis for the Third World studies- research,
knowledge, and communication. It was also during those years (since
1968) I began to discover Asia and Asian
religions, especially Buddhism. I wrote my PhD thesis on the
sociology of Buddhism in
Sri Lanka
in 1974. Of course, it often concerns extremely different societies
and cultures, but I work with the same focus: the idea of trying to
explain the role of religion in society and how much it contributed
to building cultures and so orienting the general shape of
societies. What I understood was that religion is part of society
but also the fruit of society. This time I wanted to apply my
approach to other faiths: how religion was functioning in Eastern
societies. I had worked in Europe, North America and Latin America
and now began to work in Asia.

In the seventies and eighties, I also had quite a
lot of contact with the socialist world. That was also one of my
preoccupations after my contact with Vietnam and the liberation movements in
Africa. I began to visit several socialist countries.

I had been to
Poland
before but more for religious reasons and in the Catholic milieu,
rather than for social or political purposes. I began to have more
contact with the Soviet Union, with
Cuba and with
Vietnam
. My preoccupation was why these socialist countries were so
radically anti-religious.

My feeling was that one of the failures of the
socialist system was its anti-religious position. To force
very believing masses of people, like those in Latin America or
Asia, to come to an atheist position almost as a must before
becoming a socialist was, I found totally wrong. So I had many
discussions with different groups of Marxists in Sri Lanka, in
India, in Vietnam, in Cuba and the rest of Latin America, and, of
course, in Europe. I organised a few conferences on that topic in
socialist countries and hoped to do some research on the topic in
socialist countries. That was more or less the end of seventies and
the beginning of the eighties.

In the eighties my main preoccupation was Nicaragua , precisely because I found there a
meeting place between socialism and Christianity. Because so many
Christians were committed in the revolution, many of my friends
asked me to go there. I had finished a substantial part of my work
in Vietnam . My desire was precisely to collaborate
with a social revolution, which did not deny the importance of the
role of Christians or the importance of the Gospel as an inspiration
for the transformation of the society. I did research in Nicaragua for the Sandinista
Front and for the progressive part of the Church. I then began to go
quite often to
Cuba
and gave a course on the sociology of religion with my colleague
Genevieve Lemercinier. That was, I would say, the preoccupation of
the eighties.

In the nineties

[31]the
preoccupation was the question of globalisation, because the
neo-liberal model was imposing itself more and more and socialist
countries in Eastern Europe exploded. The
Tricontinental Centre was a good platform for exploring this issue.
Globalisation of the capitalist system was the basis of the
increasing social differences in the world and an obstacle to real
solutions. So I began to work on that and the journal Alternative
Sud focused on analysing the various aspects and faces of
globalisation. It began in 1994. In 1996, on the occasion of the
twentieth anniversary of CETRI, I proposed the idea of organising a
counter Davos conference in order to build the forces of
anti-globalisation. This became the alter-globalisation movement,
which means another kind of globalisation. The first meeting at
Davos in Switzerland in 1999 was one
of the origins of the World Social Forum. Since then I have been
very much involved in this, not only participating in the Forum but
also in the thinking process, empirical and theoretical, on the
meaning of the World Social Forum and developing a critical approach
to the constitution of a new historical subject.

It was also in 1996 that Genevieve Lemercinier
died. She had been my collaborator at the Socio-Religious Centre in
Brussels, my assistant at the
Catholic University in
Louvain and, later on, my colleague.
She was also the co-founder of CETRI. She completed a PhD in
Sociology, writing a thesis on ideology and religion in Kerala. She
accompanied me during my travels and work in Asia and
Latin America for more than 30 years. Her contribution was
theoretical and methodological, completing my approach, which had
been more philosophical. Her scientific contribution, her political
commitment and her profound religious conviction were a fundamental
contribution to the work of both the sociology of religion at the
University and of CETRI for over 20 years.

How can we build another force to
transform the main orientation of thinking and of practices of
the economic political field?

How can we as Christians contribute to
that?

This is the concern of the journal Alternative
Sud and also of recent publications in Globalising
Resistances in collaboration with Samir Amin. This has been for
me extremely important for the general approach of the work, as
everyone knows that Samir Amin is a Marxist and an atheist. We are
able to collaborate and to create a united front in all that we are
trying to achieve. His theoretical approach is one of the most
profound and brilliant of the moment and has great importance for
the development of the resistance to global capitalism.Recently, I have also been impressed by another
issue, the fact that many revolutionaries, in the new situation
where revolution is not at the door, have changed and adapted their
ways of thinking. I do not speak here of those who have abandoned
the struggle, but those who are discovering the spiritual dimension
of life. After having encountered many deceptions in their own
struggles they see a way to continue rather than abandon this quest.
Such an approach is religiously plural, but a new dimension of the
Christian faith is part of it.

The only way to meet the challenge of capitalist
globalisation is to join forces to de-legitimise it and to
organise the popular movements and organisations to propose and
bring about alternatives. The Social Forum does a lot on this path,
but a great deal remains to be done.

Q: What is the
relationship between the globalisation of capitalism and the
question of culture today?

A:
Globalisation today is not only a technical problem. The type of
globalisation we have today is the globalisation of the accumulation
of capital, which is orienting and influencing all the decisions of
the international economy, and also political and military fields.
Culture is at stake because human beings are transformed into
producers or consumers. It is only as a producer or a consumer
that you are useful for capital accumulation. And that transforms
attitudes and mentalities, in other words, culture.

The consuming culture is important because if you
do not consume you do not contribute to the accumulation of capital
and you are useless. That is why, for example, the continent of
Africa, which is consuming very little, is just left over. It is
because they are useless. That creates a whole approach to life,
which is also ultimately influencing the culture of the people. This
is why we have to work also from a cultural point of view. In the
same line of thinking, the role of religion is quite important. Such
an approach gives the possibility of being critical and proposing
other aims in the social organisation of life.

Q:
Please describe the path that led you to the Marxist approach to the
sociology of religion.

A: For me the main
problem was to explain the social functions of religion in society.
Therefore I had to use an ontological instrument. I found that the
sociology proposed by Marx was the best tool for understanding
societies and so for understanding the role of religion in society.
Of course, it is a tool and not a dogma. The reasons for this are
four:

First, the totality of the approach, in
the sense that when you study one element of society you have to put
that within the context of whole of society in order to understand
it. Religion or family is not something in itself; it is always a
part of the totality of society.

It is also an historical approach, you do not
understand the situation of today if you do not know its genesis,
and how it has been constructed.

Thirdly, it is dialectical approach. Sociology is
not a natural science, rather it is about interactions between
acting people. When one social group acts another group reacts.
Reality is proceeding not in a linear way but in a dialectical
way. That is very fundamental in Marxism.

Finally, the theory of historical materialism is
central in the sense that if you do not go into the way that people
are organising themselves, to produce their means of existence, you
are unable to understand the constitution of a society. It is not
dogma. It is the result of empirical research. We find that
everywhere.

So the idea is not that religion comes from the
economy. That is stupid! But definitely the great religions like
Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, etc., have appeared when the people
were able to produce some surplus which gave the possibility that a
priestly or a religious group would appear, not being required by
necessity to work to produce material goods. It is only when society
is producing enough means of existence, so that some people are not
obliged to work with their own hands, that you can have a religious
institution. The same can be said about artists or philosophers.
Religious beliefs and practices exist of course, but it was part of
the group and not an institutionalised matter as such. All the great
religions are based on a philosophical approach to life, but they
only become institutions when society has produced enough means of
subsistence.

Q: Where do you stand in relation to Otto
Maduro, Anthony Mansueto and Antonio Gramsci?[32]

A: The great
contribution of Gramsci was to introduce into Marxist thinking
aspects which had been neglected by the Marxist tradition,
especially culture, the role of intellectuals, role of religion and
certain aspects of the political dimension. That has been very
important for Gramsci. That is why his approach was also rejected by
some of the most Orthodox Marxists at that time.

As far as the others are concerned the
preoccupation of Maduro and Mansueto is more of a religious
preoccupation and they worked quite a bit along that line. Maduro
was attracted by the psychological aspects of religion but Mansueto
is more a philosopher but both are quite preoccupied by the
Christian basis of their thinking, so their contribution is
interesting. Sometimes, though I do not agree with them as a whole,
it was very important to see people coming from a Catholic
background and a keeping religious preoccupation while adopting a
Marxist approach and try to work on certain coherence in both
approaches.

Q: What do you see as
the relationship between a Marxist analysis of society and a Marxist
analysis of religion?

A:
For Marx there was no difference, because he came to the idea that
religion is part of society and if you analyse society you have to
analyse religion. He was preoccupied not only by scientific analysis
but by constructing the tools for action. He said very clearly that
when religion plays a role against the emancipation of human beings
you have to fight against it. This is an empirical position Marx
developed when he became primarily interested in the socio-economic
analysis of capitalist and pre-capitalist societies.

In the first part of his writings, when he was
more a philosopher than a social analyst, he influenced by the views
of Feuerbach, whose philosophical approach was that religion had to
be rejected and destroyed, as a matter of principle. Marx later
changed his views quite radically and was involved in a controversy
with the disciples of Feuerbach. They were called fundamental
atheists, whereas Marx came out with the view that it was useless
fight against religion as an abstraction. He said doing so was
employing theological discourse in reverse. He wanted to observe the
role of religion in different types of societies because religion is
part of society and if we want to change society we have to look at
its foundations. That is why when he analysed the role of religion
in Prussia , he said
the first thing was to fight against religion because the religion
was, in this case, one of the main institutions maintaining the
system. It was not a matter of principles, but of empirical reality.
It is also interesting to remember that when Marx is quoted as
saying that religion is the opiate of the people; it is just one
part of the sentence. In the rest he also says that religion is the
inspiration of the oppressed people. Of course, opiates help people
live through sad situations, but they do not lead them to enter into
the struggle to change the situation. That was his observation.

In sum our message to Marxists is to take
religion seriously and our message to theologians or religionists is
to take society seriously.

Q:What is the current context of this Marxist approach?

A: Since the fall
of the Soviet Union there has been a strong
reaction against Marxism, not only politically but also
intellectually. Marxism was seen as negative and dogmatic against a
real scientific approach.

About fifteen years after the fall of the
Soviet Union there was a renewal in Marxist thinking. Many
publications have emerged. There are new approaches in social
thinking, which are again taking Marxism seriously, even if the
mainstream is still neo-liberal in economics and, to a certain
extent, postmodern in philosophy and in social sciences. But there
is a new approach with a revised vision of what the Marxist approach
can bring, though the majority consider it a question of the past
and think that if you are a Marxist, you are a dinosaur and you do
not understand the changes taking place in society.

It is easier now because during the time of the
communist regimes in Europe there was a
“reduced type” of Marxism that was intellectually difficult to
accept and was associated with the politics. Now is the time for a
better analysis

of the socialist societies of Eastern Europe
and the causes of their failure.[33]

Q: What about your
Utopology?

A: The struggle for
Utopia is a struggle for hope, and that means that it is not a
struggle for something impossible to attain. Capitalist logic is
killing all Utopias. That is why Mrs. Thatcher said –TINA

[34]
and Francis Fukuyama speaks about the end of history. That means
that any utopia is impossible! What can you hope for in a world of
inequalities and oppression?

Struggle against the type of globalisation that
we have today is fundamental for the definition of Utopia and the
struggle for Utopia is also fundamental for the opposition to the
present day globalisation. It is the search for another type of
globalisation.

Q:
What sources inspire you most in
this Utopian thinking?

A: The struggle for
Utopia is a struggle for hope, and that means it is not a struggle
for something impossible to get, but with the idea that “something
which does not exist today could exist tomorrow”. So that is the way
that I define Utopia. A French Protestant Philosopher Paul Ricoeur,
talks about necessary Utopia because of the fact that globalisation
of capitalist logic is killing all Utopias. There are alternatives
possible. Otherwise it is pointless to talk about Utopias .In the
World Social Forum we have discovered that alternatives exist in all
sectors of the collective human life. That is extremely important.
We can talk about three levels of alternatives, the long-range,
middle-range and short-range. There are alternatives and there are
people working for alternatives. That means that the Utopia is
possible and it is not just a dream.

We must also find enough motivating force to
struggle in order to realise Utopia. There may be various types of
sources of such force. One would be the humanist perspective that we
find in many people committed to struggling for justice. This is a
very fundamental basis for Utopia. Marxist militants, people who
believe that it is possible to transform society, find motivation
for commitment from this humanist conviction. If we take the
believing community, for example, in Christianity, it is clear that
the Bible reflects a process of liberation, and that the prophets
speak about a possible future. In the Gospel we see the struggle
against injustice and the hope in the Kingdom of God. All of this is very coherent.
It means that we have to believe in Utopia. The next step is to be
committed to the search and the struggles for such a Utopia.

Q: What is the
relationship between resistance and the alternatives at the ground
level?

A:
This is of course a very concrete question raised also at the World
Social Forum. It is all right to protest, but what do you propose
instead? What do you bring about with your protest? And I must say
that we are very conscious of that in the Forum. The fact that such
forums exist is already progress, and all the things happening
during the forums and surrounding the forums are important steps
forward. But it is true that the relation between resistance and
what has to be accomplished is not an easy matter. It is easier to
protest than to construct, than to build the Utopia. The protest is
necessary to de-legitimise the system, because if you are not
convinced that the system is not just and has to be changed, how
will you mobilise people to change it? Here also we can talk about
three levels, the economic, the social and the ethical protest. Such
a step is necessary, but it is only one step in the building of
alternatives. We also have to show that it is possible to organise
the economy, social relations, political life and culture on another
basis. So that is the relationship between resistance and
alternatives and for me it is impossible to separate them.

Q: In your recent
thinking you have given emphasis to human solidarity and respect for
nature in the context of primal religions. Could you elaborate on
this?

A: Having worked
with indigenous peoples at different meetings and also having been
involved in research into the autonomy of the primal peoples in
Latin America, I have discovered the richness of the religions of
those peoples. Generally, we think only in terms of the great
religions, which have elaborate philosophical bases, like Hinduism,
Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, etc. and we
do not take too much into account the religiosity of indigenous
peoples. Personally, I have discovered two main pillars in the
primal communities:

1. The symbiosis between human beings and
nature. Of course, this is expressed with a non-analytic culture
and way of thinking, so immediately we tend to link them with
witchcraft. But for me this is secondary and it is normal in the
kind of culture in which indigenous people live. They express such a
fundamental value in their own language with their experience, and
we have to express this in our language with another type of
thinking.

With modernity, we have separated human beings
totally from nature. Man has to dominate and exploit nature, in
function of its necessities. We see the result of that kind of
attitude that does not hesitate, for to experience immediate
necessity is to forget about the future. This the first pillar in
all the traditional religions: the symbiosis between nature and man
is fundamental; man is part of nature and is not separated from
nature. So to destroy nature means to a certain extent to destroy
humanity. Think of the way that we treat animals. Each year seven
hundred thousand animals are killed for scientific purposes in
Belgium
alone. Is that a human way of relating to the living world and
nature? There is some horrible treatment of animals: if we take the
issue of industrial production of chickens, for example, it is
utterly dehumanised. Capitalism has produced and promoted ways to
use nature as a commodity and not to worry about any other aspects
and dimensions of nature. The idea of respect for nature was also
well developed in the Oriental religions.

2. The second pillar is human solidarity. That
means that man is not just an individual but he is part of a group,
of a community. Capitalism has developed an extreme individualist
vision of the world. On the contrary, human solidarity is quite
central in indigenous religions. This functions as a criticism of
individualism and puts emphasis on the collective necessities of
mankind and the social dimension of human life. That is why the
rediscovery of primal traditions is quite important.

The difficulty is that they express these views
in their own culture and we have our own culture, which has been
deformed by capitalist logic and thinking, but which is also a step
forward. We are interpreting reality not in function of myths, but
using knowledge of the functioning of nature and society. But that
does not mean that we have to use this knowledge for the
exploitation of nature and human beings. That is why the
valorisation of traditional religions has meaning.

Q: How do you look at
the question of terrorism?

A:
Terrorism is the use of blind violence to kill innocent people. In
ethical terms it has to be condemned. I told you of my conversations
on the matter with Fidel Castro, who said that terrorism, have to be
condemned in any case. He also said, “I can say that during the war
to re-conquer Cuba , we never killed a civilian. That is
totally against all ethics. Today even if it comes from the
Palestinians or the Iraqis, terrorism has to be condemned,” and I
agree with that.

But the fact that terrorism is a concept so
connected with ethics makes it subject to manipulation. That is what
political leaders from the USA and other countries are
doing when they call everyone who is not in agreement with them a
terrorist. Now people like EvaMorales in Bolivia and movements of landless peasants in
Brazil
are being called terrorists. It immediately raises the image of
something that is ontologically wrong in order to mobilise people
against them. Calling every enemy a terrorist is a manipulation of
the vocabulary.

I remember during the war when I was involved in
the resistance myself, at the end of the war I was with a small
commando of two or three others on a farm where German soldiers were
sleeping, exhausted from the long retreat from Normandy. The first
word that they said was terrorists! And we said, “No, we are not
here to kill you!” But that was their reaction and they believed
that any person in the resistance was a terrorist.

Now there are two things to add, politically
speaking. Terrorism used by people who are really oppressed, not
knowing what to do, is completely different from the kind of
terrorism used by the state. State terrorism is used systematically
and scientifically by states or by political organisations. This is
not the same thing. As Monsignor Romero, the Archbishop of El
Salvador said: “The violence of the dominant class to defend their
privileges is not the same as the violence used by the victims even
if you condemn violence.”As I said at the anti-terrorism
meeting in La Havana in 2005, of course we have to condemn
terrorism, but at the same time we cannot abandon political
judgment. This is precisely what we are discovering at the tribunal
on Iraq . State terrorism is
used by the USA
and the
UK . But
what about car bombs killing people in the markets and mosques? Such
methods cannot be accepted, but the condemnation of these forms of
resistance should not obscure the primary terrorism brought about by
the war. And we must not enter into the logic of the Americans and
British calling every resistance terrorist!

Q: What about your work
on people’s tribunals?

A: Opinion
tribunals have moral and ethical force instead of juridical
force. I remember that I assisted the Brussels
tribunal on the war in
Vietnam
, more than thirty years ago. It was perhaps the first one, with the
judges were Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell and Lelio Basso,an Italian senator, who later founded the
permanent people’s tribunal in
Rome. He asked me to be a member of the tribunal and I participated
in about fifteen different sessions on topics such as
Nicaragua ,
Guatemala ,
El Salvador ,
Eritrea , Afghanistan and
multinationals. I was president of some sessions, such as the one on
immunity in
Latin America in 1991. Lately this idea expanded. Now
tribunals have been formed in different parts of the world. I have
chaired sessions of the tribunal on Iraq : one in Brussels in
2004 and the other in
Barcelona in 2005. I was also the chairperson in Mexico for the tribunal on American policy on
Cuba .
The work of the tribunals is of a very serious type, with lawyers,
economists, theologians, sociologists in the jury. It must be very
strict in order to be credible. The formal aspect shows the
difference between a tribunal and an act of solidarity. The form of
the tribunal includes a specific charge, witnesses, prosecutor,
defence and jury. I think even if is the tribunals are only of an
ethical character, they may have a certain impact and ability to
de-legitimise some situations.

The other purpose of the tribunals is to help the
evolution of international law. Therefore, it is important to have
international jurists who can really speak from the juridical point
of view. So those are the two major functions of tribunals: to
de-legitimise a specific situation and to promote some kind new
orientation in the field of international law.

Q: What is your reaction
to the concept of democracy?

A: Democracy is a
very fundamental issue and it should not be a long-term aim only but
something, which is also used within the struggle and in the
functioning of social movements. The concept of democracy as it is
used today by Western society is totally insufficient. There is only
democracy in those countries in formal political life, but not in
economics. We must add that an electoral democracy is not a
participatory democracy and so we have to enlarge the concept.

Q: What is your response
to the idea of reconciliation?

A: Is the love of
neighbour compatible with class struggle? I have written a text on
this topic

[35]:
There exists a concept of reconciliation, a concept that is used by
the dominant classes. In Nicaragua since 1990, when the big landlords came
back from Miami, the whole
discourse of the political system has been about reconciliation.
What does that mean? That means the poor peasants have again to
accept being dominated by the landlords. They have to give back the
property received as a result of land reform. So we have to
recognise that reconciliation has been used in a very ideological
way. Reconciliation is necessary but it can only happen if you
recognise the faults of the past. Then you can have reconciliation.
It is not just saying that reconciliation can be achieved, and we
forget the past as in the cases of
Argentina ,
Chile , Cambodia , Burundi and Rwanda .

Q: What is the
relationship between reconciliation and liberation from a
socio-political and a theological point of view?

A:
From a political point of view, in order to have real reconciliation
and reconstruction, which is a social process, there have to be
conditions. Otherwise it does not work. One of the main conditions
is the recognition of the wrong done, as I have said. If this does
not happen, after one or two generations the matter will come up
again. We see this, for example, in
Turkey
with the genocide of the Armenians at the beginning of the 20th
century, more than one hundred years ago. Turks always refused to
admit that there was genocide and now with the third or the fourth
generation the matter is coming back again. We see this also in
Latin America. After the military dictatorships came the laws of
amnesty. Well, this did not solve anything because it was like
saying that nothing had happened. In fact, things have happened and
as long as this is not recognised and condemned, the matter will
never die but will remain in the memory of the people. So, from the
purely political point of view, in order to solve such situations,
it is necessary to go through a social process of recognition of the
wrongdoing and legal condemnation. After that, reconciliation can
take place. But you cannot pardon something, which has not been
recognised. You can pardon it if it has been recognised as a
wrongdoing by the people who are responsible. Then you can say okay,
in order to build society we have to bring about a process of
reconciliation. That means the possibility of living together again.
Let us consider the example of co-operation between the Germans, the
French and the Belgians after the Second World War. New Germany recognised the
wrongdoing and paid for it. Now the relationship between Germany , France and Belgium in spite of all that
has had happened is excellent, and it has been possible to build on
a reconciliation process. That is from a political point of view.

From the ethical point of view and even the
theological point of view, this is all the more true. Because there
is also, you see, an ethical aspect; reconciliation is a value
recognised in the Gospel and is found in other religions as well.
Such an ethical value has a special meaning for Christians in the
work of constructing the reign of God. So it has a very fundamental
dimension. But, again, this dimension is possible on the condition
that the party who has been guilty has an ethical attitude. For
example, the military in Argentina , South
Korea , the Philippines and Haiti all refused to
recognise any wrongdoing. How can you reconcile? In this sense
reconciliation from an ethical point of view is meeting the same
goal as from the political perspective. Finally, reconciliation
means also a certain type of compensation; it may be material or it
may be moral, but compensation is also necessary.

The victims can eventually renounce material
compensation if they want to, but they have to decide, not the ones
who were responsible in the past or the state. Of course, from the
Christian perspective, pardon is very fundamental and very important
and it is only possible when the wrongdoing has been recognised.

Q: What is your critique
of the “common good” approach?

A: Theoretically,
the “common good” is a positive concept, but we have to see how it
is applied in practice. It has been used by the social doctrine of
the Church, at least the Catholic Church, as the main fundamental
concept for the organisation of society. However, it very often
remains abstract, without taking into consideration the real
existence of the social relationships which are structural ones and
not simply a superimposition of different types of social status
without structural links. In this way, the general vision is that
the different social strata in society have to collaborate for the
common good. Each one of them has its place and a role to play
within that place.

But the problem is such a vision does not
challenge the place. In fact, in industrialised society, there is a
bourgeoisieand there is a proletariat. Today we have
a capitalist North absorbing the riches of the South. To create a
common good is not just a matter of superimposing different strata
in social life but to recognise that society is structural: the
bourgeoisie
cannot live without the proletariat. World capitalism cannot exist
without the mechanism to absorb the riches produced by others. In
most instances, the churches just call for raising consciousness:
“Be aware and be preoccupied with the poor,” but they do not
challenge the organisation of society to any great extent. In this
sense the concept of achieving common good by asking each stratum of
society to collaborate on moral grounds for the construction of a
better society is an illusion, if you do not say at the same time
that you have to transform the structures of society. Society is not
just a superimposition of social strata, but a structural
organisation of classes, and classes are structurally related. That
is why I am critical of the type of analysis of society in terms of
strata and not in terms of class. Such a position is not necessarily
conscious. There is always an implicit analysis of society; you
cannot elaborate a social doctrine without it. This is not only true
for the Catholic Church or the Christian churches, but for all
religions. That leads to a call for a moral attitude but not to a
structural change of society and this has political consequences.
For example, Christian democracy asks everyone to collaborate for
the common good without challenging the place of different social
groups. In Vietnam , when I made a
study of a Catholic commune in the North, the peasants told me,
“Thanks to communism now we are able to live the Gospel, because now
we are equal. Before there were some landlords who were exploiting
us, but we had to respect them because they were Catholics. Now
there are no more landlords. We are more or less equal and so we can
live the values of the Gospel.” It was very interesting to hear
that! How can we think of a Christian approach when you have the
distribution of revenue in which 10% of people in
Latin America absorbed 40% of the riches and almost half of the
population is living below the poverty line? Then you preach
reconciliation, you preach charity you preach common good. But first
contribute to changing that, because otherwise you will be unable to
apply your principle.

Q: Do you view ethics as
a social construct?

A: Ethics in a
tribal society is not the same as ethics in an industrial society.
In this sense it is a social construction because it has to be
adapted to the concrete situations, otherwise it remains just an
abstract. You can elaborate all the great principles of ethics, but
if they are not applied then they are just useless. I do not say
that a theoretical approach is not necessary; I do not say that the
fundamental issues like respect and the dignity of every human being
as the basis of the construction of ethics are unimportant, but the
concept of ethics, in the concrete sense of human life and in the
history of humanity, is a social construction, because it must
constantly be adapted according to place and time.

Q: Is this approach
different from the traditional Roman Catholic natural law approach?

A: Absolutely. Of
course the whole idea of natural law has been very greatly developed
in
Louvain by philosopher and sociologist
Canon Jacques Leclercq, who I worked with and I knew very well.
Because he developed the approach of natural rights and sociology
simultaneously, he made a real contribution. Otherwise, the concept
remains an abstraction, which has very little real social
consistency. In a discussion about the market with the director of
the IMF in Washington, I asked, “How it is possible that all your theories which
seem to be perfect and logical, when in reality in the South they
are transformed into catastrophes. Do you not think that the market
is a social relation?” He was furious and he said, “No! You are
wrong.” When you believe that the market is a fruit of natural law
it becomes almost a divine institution and all the rest is logical.
Then the dogma is the freedom of the market and you do not think
that the market is a social relation where the powerful have
advantages over the less powerful.

Q: What is your response
to eco-justice concerns?

A:
Of course, the problem of ecology is the destruction of nature and
the climate, etc., but it is also a social issue. It is not just a
natural issue, because that situation is the result of a certain
economic and social system and a certain vision of development. This
has to do with our type of human relationship with nature, and, of
course, it goes together with the exploitation of human beings.
Ecology is not something in itself. We have to defend nature with a
consciousness of the social conditions at the origins of its
destruction. It is the logic of the type of development brought by
capitalism (which has also been assumed to a certain extent by real
socialism) that has brought such fundamental contradictions. So
eco-justice is a part of the whole vision that we have to develop by
introducing a social approach.

Q: What was your
relationship with Ernesto Cardenal?

A: I met him in
1982 after the Sandinista revolution. Ernesto was the Minister of
Culture and I proposed to him some work on the cultural aspects of
the revolution. He was interested and we had many discussions. We
became very good friends. He left the Ministry ten years later after
the fall of the Sandinistas. He went back to writing and sculpture.
For the 20th anniversary of CETRI I asked him to make a
sculpture for us and he created the Sanatio. It is a black
bird found in Nicaragua , which he called the proletarian bird,
because he has no colour and is a common bird that country.

Q: What was your
relationship with Paulo Freire?

A: I know Paulo
very well and of course I was very impressed by his methodological
approach. To a certain extent he was also coming from the same
tradition as the YCW.

He was further influenced by Cardijn’s approach
of See, Judge and Act. I met him several times and adopted some
aspects of his thinking on social analysis. Finally, he had to leave Brazil because of the military dictatorship. He
worked with the WCC (especially on adult education). When he was
forced into exile and could not establish direct contact with his
family in
Brazil ,
I served as an intermediary.

[1]The first of the interview series. This
interview was held in Louvain-la-Neuve respectively on 6th,
10th and 11th. July 2005 at CETRI.

[2] Houtart calls this
phenomenon: De-Christianization of the working class (my
correspondence with Houtart on 23 February 2005).

[8]
François Houtart, Religion and Ideology in
Sri Lanka,
Bangalore: TPI, 1974. (One of the
recommended works for the courses and the research in Understanding
Society and Culture for the Undergraduate and Graduate courses at
the Theological College of Lanka, Pilimatalawa, Sri Lanka which is a
Protestant Ecumenical Theological School in Sri Lanka that is
affiliated to the University of Serampore, West Bengal, India.)

[9]
CETRI (The Tricontinental Centre)is situated in the city of Louvain-la-Neuve. As the name indicates the institution works with
Latin America, Asia and Africa.

[12]
For an overview on Houtart’s relationship to colonialism see:
François Houtart, Colonialism (written in the form of a
dictionary article for WCC, 1990.) 1-9.

[13]
For an analysis of the religious justification of Portuguese
colonialism see: François Houtart, Religion and Ideology in Sri
Lanka, Bangalore: TPI,
1974.101-171.

[14]
For a description of Fr. Kappen’s work, especially regarding the
development of a counter-culture, see Bastiaan Wielenga,
Liberation Theology in Asia, in The Cambridge Companion to
Liberation Theology, ed; Christopher Rowland, CUP, 1999. 52-53.

[19]
The first of seminar this kind was held in 1973 in
Bangalore India . The Baguio seminar was held in the Philippines in 1975 and the
report was published in 1976. Francois Houtart, “Religion and
Development”, Religion and Development in Asia, Baguio Feres Seminar Report, n.p. 1976.

Jerome Sahabandhu
of Sri Lankan nationality is a Methodist Minister and faculty member
of the Ecumenical Theological College of Lanka in
Kandy,
Sri Lanka .
Mr.Sahabandhu has completed his post graduate B.D. degree at the
Serampore
University
College, West Bengal,India and his Masters
in Intercultural Theology at the Katholieke Universiteit
Nijmegen in The Netherlands respectively.
His specialisation is Theological and Social Ethics.He is
currently studying for his doctorate at the Irish School Ecumenics,
Trinity College, Dublin. He interviewed François Houtart
in July 2005 at the Tricontinental Centre at Louvain la Neuve
(Belgium) for his research on social ethics based on Houtart's
social teaching and research. The transcript of this interview is
presented here with the consent of François Houtart and is
published
in the form of questions-answers style for the benefit of a wider
readership.